Aspereger’s did not cause Newtown

I can’t believe we keep having to go over this. Then again it’s hard to wage a war on ignorance when the ignorant want to stay that way.

For those of you who may not know Asperger’s Syndrome is a form of Autism where the sufferer has trouble with social situations and has trouble discerning different types of speech like sarcasm. That’s just a very basic explanation of it. What Asperger’s doesn’t do is turn someone into a homicidal maniac.

Yes there have been violent killers who have suffered from Asperger’s. The one’s that come to mind for me are William Freund, John Odgren, and of course Adam Lanza.

Another thing that Asperger’s doesn’t do is that it doesn’t diminish your ability to tell right from wrong. While Asperger’s may be seen as a mental disease Lanza and the others knew full well what they were doing and what they were doing was wrong. Newtown was not just some outburst. Lanza had planned it for months as did Freund and Odgren. The only drawback in these cases with Asperger’s, if you can call it a drawback, is that Apserger’s patients tend to be highly intelligent and organized hence the ‘success’ of these attacks. However these attacks are the exception and not the rule.

The problem is that too many people in our society believe correlation is causation. They believe that since these killers had Asperger’s that everyone that has Asperger’s is a potential mass murderer. It also doesn’t help that too many criminal defense lawyers are using Asperger’s as a defense in murder trials, as shown with that of John Odgren. Then lastly there’s the people who have self-diagnosed themselves as having Asperger’s. Asperger’s cannot just be diagnosed by going to WebMD. It has to be diagnosed by a medical professional. If you tell people you have Asperger’s and you’ve never seen a doctor about it chances are you’re just an anti-social jerk.

Stop living in fear of everything. Knowledge is power and the more knowledge you have the better off we’ll all be.